Customer Story with yamo

yamo needed a single source of truth for their equity management, investor relations and employee participation plans.

“I have certain things that just need to work all the time and I need to be a hundred percent able to rely on this and that’s where Ledgy came in.”

Tobias Gunzenhauser

CEO, yamo

Founded in 2016

25 Employees

Food Technology

Series A - closed

We are excited to feature our first customer story with Tobias Gunzenhauser, CEO of the FoodTech startup yamo. Read below why Tobias chose Ledgy for yamo's equity management, tracking and setting-up employee participation plans and reporting professionally to the board and investors.

Tobias is one of three co-founders, and has a background in business with experience in the retail and consumer goods industry. José Amado-Blanco and Luca Michas are the other two co-founders. José is the scientific brain behind their product range and has graduated in food science. Luca has a track record in marketing. He used to work for agencies but also in the consumer goods environment. Yamo went from only three co-founders to more than 25 people since its incorporation in 2016.

Yamo operates mainly on a subscription-based, namely a “Direct-to-Consumer” model and hence sells mainly online. They recently partnered with the Swiss retail company Coop, to sell in dedicated fridges across Switzerland.

Yamo was one of the early adopters of Ledgy. They were looking for an equity management software, specifically made for startups. They needed a tool that was intuitive yet powerful enough to model complex financing rounds accurately and allow them to onboard investors and their employees.

“Planning your next financing round? Look no further and manage your fundraising with Ledgy, no matter the complexity and how many stakeholders are involved. Ledgy has you covered!”

Why was yamo looking to replace spreadsheets?

At first, they used spreadsheets, but it was always a real hassle because spreadsheets are inherently error-prone: Someone can mess up a formula and the numbers do not square anymore. Sometimes, they would send the cap table out by email, the recipients worked on it and sent it back changed. Once they got it back, it was very chaotic and nobody understood how things were connected and how the numbers came to be.

“When an investor asks for your cap table and about the company’s valuation, and you’re unsure if the spreadsheet is still accurate, it can be really stressful. It’s a place you certainly don't want to be in.”

Why is yamo using Ledgy?

With Ledgy, Tobias and his co-founders have the certainty and reliability, that things are correct all the time. They can be sure that ratios, valuations, dilutions and all the nitty-gritty details are accurate.

“I have certain things that just need to work all the time and I need to be a hundred percent able to rely on this and that’s where Ledgy came in.”

All three co-founders have admin access to Ledgy. Since one can grant different levels of access, for example, “view only” or “admin access”, yamo’s investors are also using Ledgy with a “view-only” access. Now, they’re looking into inviting their lawyers as well. This will greatly facilitate their due diligence. In essence, it will save Tobias a lot of time and give him an additional layer of credibility.

Tobias, José and Luca also decided early on to hand out a fair share of equity to their employees. One of the key things all three co-founders wanted was that all employees are entrepreneurs themselves and become shareholders of yamo. Tobias strongly believes that when one is a shareholder, you're an actual owner of that company and hence behave differently. This is also the reason why yamo set up an employee participation plan on Ledgy, such that every shareholder has a clear overview about their vesting schedule and stake in the company. This attitude is not very common in Switzerland and Germany yet. In Germany specifically, from a legal point of view, it is very difficult to incentivize employees. When you look for example at startups in the US it is absolutely normal. In terms of numbers, employees in Europe own about half of what employees own in a US-company.

Thank you Tobias again for this insightful story of yamo and we’re looking forward to supporting your high-growth ambitions for years to come!
For more informations, you can also watch the webinar in which we interviewed yamo.